News by the HIV Justice Network

The second HIV is Not a Crime meeting, now a Training Academy, will take place between May 17 – 20, 2016 at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The Training Academy will unite and train advocates living with HIV and…

Late last month, Prague’s Public Health Authority initiated criminal investigations against 30 gay men living with HIV that had been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STI) during the previous year. The Public Health Authority appear to believe that since…

After a very successful inaugural HIV Is Not a Crime National Conference last year, the SERO Project and Positive Women’s Network-USA are pleased to announce that the planning process is underway for a second national conference to support repeal and…

Following a scoping consultation which ran from autumn 2014 to spring 2015, the Law Commission (of England and Wales) has now published its report containing their final recommendations to the UK Government. It recommends the adoption of a modified version…

New guidelines from the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC) are the first to highlight that HIV criminalisation is a critical barrier to optimising the HIV care continuum. Currently only half of people living with HIV globally are…

Last week, at the 15th European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) Conference in Barcelona, I presented a poster on behalf of the HIV Justice Network, that showed where the prevention benefit of treatment has impacted HIV criminalisation in Europe. The reality…

This week sees the release of an important new short film from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. Consent: HIV non-disclosure and sexual assault law interrogates whether criminalising HIV non-disclosure does what the Supreme Court of Canada believes it does –…

A new study presented to the International AIDS Society conference in Vancouver, Canada last week (IAS 2015) found that 44 per cent of participants within a research cohort of people who use injection drugs living with HIV in Vancouver would…

Following the prosecution and conviction of Michael Johnson, the US state of Missouri is now ‘ground zero’ for both overly broad HIV criminalisation and overly zealous law enforcement. Yesterday police arrested (and alerted media to) a man whose only ‘crime’…

Sero is a national network of people with HIV and allies fighting HIV-related stigma, discrimination and criminalization by engaging and empowering ourselves and others with HIV to speak and advocate, conduct original research, document the experiences of those criminalized, educate…

This week, thousands of HIV scientists and clinicians are meeting in Vancouver at the 8th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, also known as IAS2015. The focus is on ending the AIDS epidemic through new evidence…

Yesterday, Michael Johnson, 23, was sentenced to 30 1/2 years in prison after being found guilty on May 14th of five counts stemming from the accusations of three people who said he exposed them to the virus without their knowledge….

The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights has updated its statement on HIV testing  — which continues to emphasise that human rights, including the right to informed consent and confidentiality, not be sacrifced in the pursuit of 90-90-90…

A new report from the World Health Organization, Sexual Health, Human Rights and the Law, adds futher weight to the body of evidence supporting arguments that overly broad HIV criminalisation does more harm than good to the HIV response. Drawing…

In January 25th of this year, a South African satirical news site, satirenews.co.za, published a ‘story’ headlined, ‘Law Passed: All HIV Positive People Would Be Marked Near Their Genitals’. The ‘story’ reads as follows: President Zuma signed a bill that seem…

Yesterday, Wednesday, June 3, the Sexual Offences Bill, sponsored by Senator Christiana Anyanwu, (pictured above) was passed by the Nigerian Senate. The new law contains a number of problematic provisions relating to “HIV or any other life threatening sexually transmitted…

The following is the keynote address by Justice Dr. Oagile Key Dingake presented to a meeting co-hosted by the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA) and the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) of the SADC…

The International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW) have published an updated position statement on the criminalisation of women living with HIV for non-disclosure, potential or perceived exposure, and transmission. The statement highlights many problems with overly broad HIV…

In a joint media release, Living Positive Victoria and the Victorian AIDS Council have welcomed the passage of the Crimes Amendment (Repeal of Section 19A) Act 2015 by the Victorian Parliament. The Act repeals Australia’s only HIV-specific law criminalising the…

Australia’s only HIV-specific criminal law, section 19A of the Crimes Act in the state of Victoria, has now been repealed. This is an exciting step forward for those of us working to turn around Victoria’s poor record on criminalisation of…

In 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada took a step in the wrong direction. The Court made a harmful decision that would have people living with HIV charged with aggravated sexual assault, jailed, and registered as sexual offenders – all…

Press Release from The Sero Project Ken Pinkela serves as a member of Sero’s Advisory Board. New York, NY April 24, 2015: The United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) has vacated HIV-related Aggravated Assault and Reckless…

Guest blog post by the production team of Ruins: Chronicle of an HIV Witch-Hunt An official repeal of Health Decree 39A has been published on the Official Journal of the Hellenic Republic as of Friday, April 17. The decree led…

The past month or so has seen a huge amount of activity around overly broad HIV criminalisation in the United States, culminating the reintroduction of the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act by Congresswoman Barbara Lee. As well as on-going arrests and…

Last week, for the first time a German court ruled that HIV transmission without prior disclosure was negligent injury, rather than intentional harm. The District Court of Aachen sentenced a 43 year-old man to one year and nine months on…